The Problem

The Share the Skies telescope is designed for taking images of deep-sky objects, like galaxies and nebulae. The camera is extremely sensitive to light and will overload when you try to image the moon. Even at the shortest possible exposures, the highlights are washed out. Also, the moon is quite large compared to the field of view of the telescope. A single shot will just show a portion of the moon.

The Solution

The Hydrogen alpha filter is designed to block out all light but that emitted by one of the hydrogen emission lines. Because of this, it blocks out most of the light coming from the moon. To image the moon, follow these instructions:

1. Set your preferences as shown above: Filter: H alpha, binning 2x2 (normal) or 1x1 (if you want a really big image), no reduction (you only need dark frames for dim objects)
2. "Set as default" if you plan on taking a lot of pictures, and submit. You can change back when you are finished.
3. Slew to moon
4. Set exposure to .1 seconds (note, that is point one!)
5. Click the centering option and take an image.
6. Practice moving the scope until you can find the part of the moon's face you want.
7. Return to SkyChart and take the image.
8. To take multiple images for a mosaic, repeat the centering (aiming) procedure, but this time start at the very top of the image, making sure the frame gets about half sky, half moon.
9. Take the shot, then re-center moving down to set a new frame that includes some overlap of the previous frame. Continue down to the bottom of the moon to generate a column, then move horizontally and start a new column going up.
10. Make sure there is adequate overlap for alignment purposes.